Tuesday, April 04, 2006

City of Los Angeles gets long overdue bath

I love the rain. Not only because it's such a rare occurrence here, but because it's all the justification I need to stay inside and work on animation. Driving in the rain here is suicidal. A light shower can turn a trip to Trader Joe's into a scene from DEATHRACE 2000. It's just not worth risking it, especially when a hot pizza is just a phone call away.

My friend Anthony dug FROM BEYOND, which makes me happy. He had very specific notes about what wasn't working, mostly sound-related issues. Sound is always the last element I add, so I have to be especially vigilant about it. I love sound design...I used to design the soundtracks for all my stage productions in my former life, but the actual engineering is something I'm learning by doing. Hopefully I'll join forces with an amazing sound designer someday who will take all these woes out of my hands and I'll never have to deal with it again.

So a few more tweaks to sound and FROM BEYOND will be ready to be released to the world. I'm planning to submit it to a few select festivals and see what kind of response it gets. The H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival in Portland, OR, definitely, since they were the inspiration to tackle a Lovecraft story. Then Screamfest here in L.A., which looks like a LOT of fun.

I'm thinking about doing a much smaller, shorter film for my next project...something fun that won't keep me up nights the way FROM BEYOND did. I'm leaning towards another horror topic, which I'll divulge more of soon as it takes shape.